Catfish Row Catfish Row You are here: Home / Sites / Catfish Row Catfish Row Catfish Row (originally called cabbage row) served as the inspirational setting of George Gershwin’s opera, “Porgy & Bess.” The Story of Porgy Porgy was a crippled beggar who got around in a cart drawn by a goat. Porgy’s real name was Sammy Smalls. Bess’ real name was Maggie Barnes. Porgy, in real life, was described in an old Charleston newspaper article, as a mean and vicious person who had killed three men. Unfortunately, in 1924, Porgy took sick, but was believed to have been “fixed” (rooted, voodoo, witch craft) because of the way he was said to have been buried. An article in the Charleston Magazine written by Jack Leland reports that Porgy’s grave was dug North to South because he died an “unrepented” sinner.

This would not have been true, for in keeping with black traditions and customs, a deceased would have been buried North to South if they died mysteriously and was believed to have been “rooted.” Turning the grave North to South meant that the spirit could not rest turned that direction and would always haunt the unknown assailant. The person would die in a matter of weeks, and they usually did. Sites Visited Cabbage Row / Catfish Row | Palmetto Carriage Works 8 Guignard Street, Charleston, SC 29401 Cabbage Row / Catfish Row Charleston is a city rich in history that dates back further than that of most American cities. There is so much to see and learn here in this charming city by the sea that you may find a relaxing carriage ride with a knowledgeable tour guide is the best way to see and discover the most at one time. 18th century architecture abounds here and you won’t be disappointed when your carriage tour travels down Church Street and past some interesting historical structures. Located on 89-91 Church Street is a three storied row of houses locally known as Cabbage Row. Cabbage Row is a structure from the Revolutionary War era.

It is a well preserved example of this type of home, consisting of a pair of houses connected by a central arcade. The structure is three stories tall with commercial ground floors that have stood the test of time. The area is now lined with private homes and specialty shops but that wasn’t always the case. At one time, Cabbage Row was home to up to ten families at a time and was mostly inhabited by the African American families of freed slaves. This is also where the name, Cabbage Row, was born. African Americans living in these row houses would sell cabbage right from their window sills. The building continued to house a tenement into the early 1900s. If you stop by Cabbage Row you may be confused by a sign on the building which reads “Catfish Row.” This more recent name comes from a book written by Charleston and Church Street native, Dubose Heyward. Cabbage Row was the setting for his novel and in it, the name was changed to Catfish Row in order to reflect the fictional location by the sea. His 1925 novel, Porgy, was also the basis for George Gershwin’s opera, Porgy & Bess.

From the ground crew that assists in the carriage loading to the guide that leads your tour, our personnel are the most experienced in the industry. We pride ourself in the quality and longevity of our staff. Over half the employees have over ten years of experience in the carriage tour industry, so you can rest assured that you are getting the highest quality product on the market. Opera on Catfish Row - UNCG Campus Weekly UNCG Campus Weekly March 16, 2010 by Campus Weekly Staff “Porgy and Bess,” the classic George Gershwin opera that introduced “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” into the American songbook, will be performed at Aycock Auditorium Sunday, March 21. The 3 p.m. matinee, part of a national tour marking the 75th anniversary of the work, is the fourth performance of the 2009-2010 University Concert & Lecture Series. Tickets for the event are $28-35 and are available at 4-4849 or boxoffice.uncg.edu .

Set along “Catfish Row” in segregated Charleston, S.C., the opera details the relationship between Porgy, a street beggar, and Bess, a prostitute. Written and performed in English, the folk opera is beloved for its memorable characters and enduring songs. In addition to “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” the opera also includes the famous songs “I Got Plenty of Nuttin’,” “I Loves You, Porgy” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.” This production of “Porgy and Bess” is produced by Michael Capasso, general manager of New York’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. The production also includes talent with local ties. Philip Boykin, who plays the role of “Crown,” and Peter MacBeth, the show’s technical director, are both graduates of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. After this performance, one show remains in the UCLS season. Moscow Festival Ballet presents “Coppelia” on Wednesday, April 14, at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale . For more information, visit ucls.uncg.edu . Send this article by email What is your name?

Please indicate below the emails to which you want to send this article: Opera on Catfish Row Enter one email per line. No more than 5 emails. On the arts: Making an opera a source of pride for Charleston -- and Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette On the arts: Making an opera a source of pride for Charleston -- and Pittsburgh June 26, 2016 12:00 AM Spoleto Festival USA The Philip Simmons Home and Museum in Charleston, S.C., was decorated with West African designs for the Porgy Houses project. The project featured the homes of influential African-Americans in Charleston, in coordination with the new Spoleto Festival production of Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess." Mr. Simmons, a celebrated blacksmith, died in 2009. Julia Lynn Photography Jonathan Green, the visual designer for Spoleto Festival USA's production of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," spotlighted Charleston's iron-working tradition. Julia Lynn Photography Catfish Row is the main center of activity in Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess," produced by Spoleto Festival USA.

Negro Leagues catcher Josh Gibson will be the subject of Pittsburgh Opera's world premiere "The Summer King," set for the 2016-17 season. By Elizabeth Bloom / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette CHARLESTON, S.C. — The paint on the house was peeling, the metal deck railing rusting. Were it not for the red diamond designs stamped onto the structure and a small descriptive placard in front of it, I might have passed it by, unaware that I was stumbling upon one of the city’s cultural treasures. This structure was the home of celebrated Charleston blacksmith Philip Simmons, who died in 2009. Behind the structure was his workshop, which has been turned into a museum. The diamonds marked Mr. Simmons’ home as a so-called Porgy House, “chosen for their significance in African-American history” in Charleston, according to the project’s website. Celebrating its 40th season, the multidisciplinary Spoleto Festival USA had put much of its institutional heft behind a new production of George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess,” which is set in this city.

The Porgy Houses featured the same West African design motifs that appeared in Spoleto’s production, so operagoers and non-fans alike could stumble upon them. The historic homes were just one example of the ways the city, the festival and the opera had meshed into one artistic whole. While in Charleston for a music critics conference centered on Spoleto — which was staging “Porgy” for the first time — I was impressed by this fusion between place and art, and I wondered what Pittsburgh could learn from it. Jonathan Green, the visual designer for the production, was well-equipped to reimagine this familiar opera for the recently completed Gaillard Center. The Charleston-based artist, who grew up in a Gullah community, accepted the opportunity to design it, he told Charleston Magazine, “under one condition: that I could do it from the perspective of Africans who came to this country like everyone else.” The costumes and sets displayed colorful West African designs, depicting “Porgy” through the eyes of an immigrant community. Mr. Green also told this story with a distinctly South Carolinian perspective. The Charleston ironwork that Mr. Simmons forged and that appears throughout Charleston featured prominently in the production.

Several local church steeples were included in the scenery, including that of Emanuel AME Church, the African-American church where nine people were shot and killed a year ago. As a tour guide explained to me, nearly every institution in Charleston had created programs around the Spoleto production. Libraries and museums held exhibits of art and other opera-centric materials, such as the piano Gershwin used to compose the music and the handwritten manuscript of DuBose Heyward’s novel “Porgy,” which inspired the work. A free simulcast made the live performance available to viewers who didn’t snag one of the sold-out tickets. Walking tours took visitors to “Porgy” sites throughout the city. On one such tour, organized for the conference, we walked past the area where Sportin’ Life would have caught his boat to New York and visited Cabbage Row, also known as Catfish Row in the novel and opera. Per Gershwin’s stipulation, “Porgy and Bess” must star an African-American cast. The music is largely inspired by African-American musical traditions, including that of the Gullah community on James Island here, which the composer visited.

To that end, Spoleto made extra efforts to include the African-American community — which tends to be underrepresented in opera audiences — into the festival’s “Porgy” activities. Members of the cast sang in local African-American churches, a spokeswoman said, and one performance was dedicated to the memory of Ethel Lance, one of the victims of the Emanuel AME shooting, who had been a custodian at the former Gaillard Municipal Auditorium. As I explored the city and stumbled upon the various connections between Charleston and “Porgy and Bess,” the Pittsburgh Opera production of Daniel Sonenberg’s “The Summer King” came to mind. Pittsburgh Opera’s first world premiere (April 29-May 7, 2017, at the Benedum Center) will chronicle the life of former Negro Leagues star catcher Josh Gibson (portrayed by Alfred Walker), who played for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. Much of the opera is set in Pittsburgh, including at the famed Crawford Grill in the Hill District, providing an opportunity to dig into the distinct Pittsburgh-ness of this work.

General director Christopher Hahn said it’s too soon to delve into details about designs and surrounding events for “The Summer King,” but Pittsburgh Opera has several collaborations in the works. The company, he said, plans to partner with entities such as the Pirates, the Josh Gibson Foundation, the African-American church community and others to promote the opera and connect with communities it may not have deep inroads with. What’s more, Pittsburgh Opera will devote much of its educational programming to “The Summer King” and will present the work for its annual student matinee. Mr. Hahn said there is already a large demand for tickets and expects that performance to sell out. “We’ve never experienced this advanced interest for a piece, so people are really jazzed to know about it,” he said. Certainly, Spoleto benefited from the fact that “Porgy and Bess” is already a beloved opera with familiar music. Pittsburgh Opera, on the other hand, is trying to galvanize local support for a new work by a lesser-known composer.

The operas may be different, but the approach taken by Spoleto — to make this new production of “Porgy” a source of pride for Charleston and a reflection of that city — is well worth considering. Elizabeth Bloom: ebloom@post-gazette.com , 412-263-1750 and Twitter: @BloomPG . Correction, June 26, 2016: The world premiere of Pittsburgh Opera's "The Summer King" was misprinted in a cutline in an earlier version of this story. It's set to debut in the 2016-17 season. Related Media: Exhibitions EXHIBITIONS Beyond Catfish Row: The Art of Porgy and Bess May 28, 2016 - October 9, 2016 Gallery 9 BUY TICKETS Beyond Catfish Row: The Art of Porgy and Bess celebrates George Gershwin's famed opera, as interpreted by visual artists since its creation.

The exhibition includes a number of paintings from the 1930s era, including works by American regionalist George Biddle, who illustrated the original Porgy and Bess libretto in 1935. Beyond Catfish Row also includes paintings by Gershwin himself and works by American modernist Henry Botkin, who accompanied the composer to Charleston while he wrote the opera. The 1930s works are paired with more recent interpretations by contemporary artists Kara Walker and Jonathan Green. One of the foremost artists addressing issues of race, class, and gender in America, Walker created a suite of twenty lithographs as illustrations for the Porgy and Bess libretto published in 2013. Green served as the visual designer contributing to costume and set design for the 2016 Spoleto Festival USA production of Porgy and Bess. Gershwin's Cottage on the Beach, 2014, by Jonathan Green (American, b. 1955); acrylic on archival mat board; Courtesy of Jonathan Green Studios Porgy and Bess, Embracing, 2013, by Kara Walker (American, b.

1969); lithograph on paper; 15 x 18 inches; Museum purchase; 2015.005.0005 Porgy and Bess with George, Near Folly Island, 1934, by Henry Botkin (American, 1896-1983); watercolor and ink on paper; 16 1/2 x 19 3/8 inches; Museum purchase; 1988.011.0002 Porgy and Moon from Porgy and Bess the libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, illustrated by Kara Walker (American, b. 1969), 2013; published by Arion Press; Museum purchase; 2015.005.0001 Cabbage Row, 1928, by Alfred Hutty (American, 1877-1954); etching on paper; 11 3/8 x 15 1/8 inches; Gift of Mrs.

Alfred Hutty; 1955.007.0046 Church Street Amusements, 1930, by George Biddle (American, 1885-1973); watercolor and ink on paper; 15 1/4 x 11 inches; Museum purchase; 1985.027.0001 The Battery, Evening, 1931; by George Biddle (American, 1885-1973); oil on canvas; 26 1/2 x 26 1/2 inches; Museum purchase; 1999.002 Related Content All-Access Pass to Inspiration and Authentic Art Experiences “Every child is an artist.” –Picasso I couldn’t agree more with Picasso’s quote, and therefore believe every child should have access to inspiring art in a beautiful, local museum. I… OPERA NEWS - The Renovation of Catfish Row January 2012 — Vol. 76, No.

7 The Renovation of Catfish Row Porgy and Bess is back on Broadway in a new production, directed by Diane Paulus, that offers an unconventional — and controversial — take on a classic of the American theater. FOSTER HIRSCH reports. A scene from Diane Paulus's 2011 Porgy and Bess production at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts © Michael J. Lutch 2012 Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald as Porgy and Bess in Paulus's production © Michael J. Lutch 2012 Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier, Bess and Porgy in Otto Preminger's 1959 film © Columbia Pictures/Photofest 2012 Neutrality about Porgy and Bess is impossible. From the 1935 premiere right up to the present, when a controversial production, staged by Diane Paulus, is opening on Broadway, the show elicits fiery debates. Should the work be performed as opera with recitatives, as its composer, George Gershwin, originally intended? Or is it better served in musical-theater fashion, with spoken dialogue between numbers?

Did a quartet of white artists — Jewish New Yorkers George and Ira Gershwin collaborating with old-school Southern aristocrat DuBose Heyward (the author of Porgy, a 1925 novel) and his wife, Dorothy (coauthor with her husband of Porgy, a 1927 play) — create a true work about black characters? Or did they concoct a pageant of demeaning racial stereotypes? To its fervent admirers Porgy and Bess is an unparalleled triumph. To its detractors it is an indigestible stew. Each of the major productions that preceded Paulus's current Broadway version, which is billed as The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, was significant in its own way. The original 1935 staging was performed on Broadway with recitatives. (Gershwin cut forty-five minutes of the score after the four-hour opening-night tryout in Boston.) In 1942, producer Cheryl Crawford removed the recitatives and presented the show as a high-end Broadway musical. From 1952 to 1956, in a U.S.

government-sponsored production by Robert Breen and Blevins Davis, the show was performed and applauded at many of the world's leading opera houses, including La Scala. During these years, Porgy and Bess was a roving goodwill ambassador — an assignment it would not have won in the Civil Rights era, when its Washington sponsors might have been concerned that the work could be used as anti-American propaganda: this is how white America has segregated its black underclass. After the release of Otto Preminger's film version in 1959, there were no major productions until 1976, when Houston Grand Opera mounted a nearly complete version to wide acclaim. In 1985, at long last — fifty years after its premiere — the work arrived on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, in a production by Nathaniel Merrill that many considered ponderous and miscast. Trevor Nunn, a master director of Broadway and West End pop operas, staged the work in an uncut four-hour version at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1986.

His scenically expanded, filmed-for-television adaptation in 1993 featured an opening set in a low dive — where the cast seems to be enacting a charade of blackness, sexy and violent, for white audiences — and a finale in which Porgy tosses away his cane, walking upright into the future. This is now the most readily available version. Porgy and Bess created its own rules, fusing opera, jazz, blues, spirituals and Broadway. At its core, however, there are sensitive issues of racial representation. "Porgy was hailed [in 1925] as a fresh interpretation of the Southern Negro," writes Frank Durham in his 1954 biography of DuBose Heyward. "It is; but it is also a deceptive interpretation. Praise was accorded Heyward's sympathetic picture of the Southern Negro, his understanding of the racial psychology.... He presents us with all the detail of firsthand observation of the underworld Negro in a Southern city — a new subject; and to him and the reader this Negro is a human being with emotional problems worthy of serious consideration.

But the Negro is to Heyward still an exotic, a picturesque representative of an alien culture, interesting for his humanity, yes, but distinctive mainly as superb material for art." A scene from the original 1935 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and designed by Sergei Soudeikine © Photofest 2012 Is it any wonder that a cool, objective reaction to this problematic landmark is hard to come by? In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I am neither a musicologist nor an opera aficionado but a film historian and the biographer of Otto Preminger, who directed the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess. The film's legendary producer, Samuel Goldwyn, in order to secure the rights from the hard-bargaining Gershwin Estate, signed a contract under the terms of which rights reverted to the estate after fifteen years. The result was that, except for rare isolated screenings, the film has been unavailable — in effect, banned — for more than three decades.

It is unfortunate that the Gershwin Estate has prevented generations of filmgoers from seeing, and judging for themselves, Preminger's film, which is at once elegant and stirring. Yet the estate has sanctioned the new Broadway venture, entrusting the property to a new team for a valid reason; as Robert Kimball, artistic advisor to the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts, told me, "We signed off to a (mostly) black creative team [Paulus's collaborators, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, musical adapter Diedre Murray and choreographer Ronald K. Brown, are African–American], because we had received such requests for years, and we had been resistant. We thought, 'Okay, let's see what they can do.'" The Paulus team launched its production with a public-relations disaster. In an August 5 interview with Patrick Healy in The New York Times, while the show was in rehearsal for its August 17 pre-Broadway tryout at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, the collaborators adopted a we-know-better-than-the-authors stance, which was also reflected in commentary in the A.R.T. program book.

"We are trying to create a more dramatically complete version that will be the most powerful experience in terms of story and characters for a twenty-first-century audience," Paulus said. "Different things need to be adapted and changed for different reasons," Parks claimed. "There are several what I would call 'anthropological moments' in the original, meaning moments created by people who were probably not deeply familiar with any African–American community…. And there are moments that need additions/rewrites/tweaks for pure dramaturgical reasons." Costar Audra McDonald complained that Bess is "often more of a plot device than a full-blooded character." The Times article enflamed Stephen Sondheim, who, in a widely quoted letter to the paper, expressed dismay at "the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself. Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don't get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that's willful ignorance.

These characters are as vivid as any ever created for the musical theatre, as has been proved over and over in productions that may have cut some dialogue and musical passages but didn't rewrite and distort them." Underlying the Paulus team's grievances is a resentment of white artists for co-opting a story about African–Americans. "Yes, Porgy and Bess was created by white guys, and that's just fine," Harold Prince, Sondheim's premier collaborator and one of the most influential directors in the history of the American musical theater, recently told OPERA NEWS. "Suzan-Lori Parks certainly has the talent to write her own libretto for a new black folk-opera, and she should do just that. But she should have passed on tampering with this one. To my mind, Porgy and Bess is sacred text. How can she or Diane Paulus know what George Gershwin had in mind?

They don't have a clear line to him." Simon Estes and Grace Bumbry in Porgy and Bess's 1985 Met premiere OPERA NEWS Archives To be sure, a doomed love story between a crippled black beggar and a drug-addicted woman with a past might offend some black artists and viewers. But I don't think the material can be altered or "reimagined" in order to bring it up to speed with contemporary standards of political correctness. The work was not written as, nor can it be transformed into, a social protest drama or a naturalistic portrait of actual black life in early-twentieth-century Charleston. It is a folk opera, a fable, a stylized period piece with archetypal characters. By the time I saw a tryout performance in Cambridge in September, most of the rewriting had been scuttled. But other strategies for aligning the show with "a twenty-first-century audience" remained. The team's revisionism was fully displayed in the opening moments. Gone was the traditional Catfish Row set, replaced by an abstract panorama of pockmarked gray boards designed by Riccardo Hernandez. This choice eliminated Catfish Row from Porgy and Bess.

The set suspended the action in limbo. Any remnant of DuBose Heyward's rich evocation of the "Negro Charleston" of another time had been deleted. There was no sense, as in Heyward's novel, of a vibrant black community filled to the brim and bursting with life. Into this anonymous nowhere, Clara (Nikki Renée Daniels) entered to sing "Summertime" in a casual, no-opera-here style — a clue to the audience that the show they were about to see, scored for a modest-sounding eighteen-piece orchestra, would be a bare-bones musical-theater rendering. "I asked myself, 'Why is [Clara] singing so high?'" the production's musical adapter, Diedre Murray, offered by way of explanation. "'That would make the baby wake up. It has to be a lullaby.' So I took the whole thing down. And then I decided I wanted to use an accordion." In the service of misplaced realism, "Summertime" was radically diminished, and Clara, in an underpopulated Catfish Row in which no children appeared, unnecessarily and distractingly sang to a real baby.

If realism was the goal, where was the evocation of a steamy Charleston dusk down by the wharf? The lush descriptions of weather in Heyward's novel were nowhere to be found in Christopher Akerlind's minimalist lighting scheme. Too, if authenticity to black experience was the production's goal, why was all trace of Gullah (the regional dialect Charleston blacks at the time would have spoken) removed? (Diction was upgraded throughout: Sportin' Life became Sporting Life, "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" became "I Got Plenty of Nothing.") Heyward's inspiration for Porgy was a real-life Charleston resident named Samuel Smalls, a beggar who traveled around town on his knees on a goat-driven cart. In recent productions, Porgy has walked with a cane; the Paulus team went one better, inserting dialogue in Act II about Porgy getting a new brace that permits him to walk in a more upright way. Their choice reminded me of what a disgruntled film executive said to Otto Preminger after the first screening of the film: "The ending is too downbeat.

Can't you make Porgy just get up and walk at the end?" The Paulus team not only upgraded Porgy's walking, it barely mentioned his begging and eliminated his belief in omens and superstitions. It was almost as if Paulus and her collaborators were ashamed of Porgy and wished him to be someone else. Their Porgy, Norm Lewis, has an innate dignity and command, and he would have endowed the character with these qualities (as Sidney Poitier did in Preminger's film) even in an interpretation more faithful to Heyward. As her pre-opening comments to the Times indicated — she observed that "the opera has the makings of a great love story ... that I think we're bringing to life" — McDonald also resisted Heyward's original characterization. With Suzan-Lori Parks, she was hoping to write a backstory for Bess, and to find ways of making the character more modern and independent. There was no backstory in the performance I saw, except the one that was already there, in plain sight, in Bess's dialogue and lyrics, and in the responses of other characters.

McDonald's interest in reinterpreting her character, along with the other claims launched by the Paulus team for "correcting" Porgy and Bess, raised some hotly contested issues about revival etiquette. How much creative rearrangement is permissible before the dividing line between reinterpreting and rewriting disappears? There can't be any hard-and-fast rules, and the only question worth asking is whether a revival enhances or illuminates a show, or distorts it. Porgy and Bess collaborators George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin © Photofest 2012 Sometimes, perhaps all too rarely, a revival has been produced as a plain and simple tribute: let's put on this show because it is terrific as it is, and if we do our job right, today's audience will appreciate the work as much as we do. More often, a revival is instigated because someone has a new insight. In recent years, this has usually meant locating a dark underlining unsuspected or not fully revealed in the original: Nicholas Hytner's Carousel is a prime example.

If a new approach, however, begins with a conviction that the work is seriously wounded — that it is out of date and requires major overhauling — why bother? That kind of distrust in the material only leads to tinkering that more likely than not will tarnish rather than restore the work's luster. Because it has areas of possible discomfort for African–American audiences, Porgy and Bess poses particular problems for any revival. But as indicated by the difficulties the Paulus team has encountered in revisiting the work — writing and then abandoning or streamlining new material — the show offers little latitude for making major changes. Indeed, a follow-up interview with the Times in November revealed second thoughts about the sets and reduced orchestrations. A truly radical approach to reviving this opera as a Broadway offering would be a production that would demand of the audience that it rise to the troubled, towering majesty of the work itself and meet this long, grandiose, controversial work on its own terms. McDonald, in fact, played the love story forcefully, and her two duets with Porgy, "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" and "I Loves You, Porgy," were thrillingly performed in the A.R.T.

mounting. She gave poignant expression to Bess's longing to become part of a community — as Porgy's wife and as the adoptive mother of Clara's baby. But most of the time she seemed at war with the character as written. She didn't exude the charged eroticism that is the driving force in Bess's "backstory." And because of how she interpreted the role, as stronger and more self-aware than Heyward's character, it was difficult for her to play Bess's last scene. Like it or not, Bess's addictions to drugs and sex overcome her resolve, and she leaves Porgy and Catfish Row. McDonald's Bess indeed would have the courage to stay; Heyward's Bess does not. In Act I, the new production laid claim to two triumphant moments. In their reframing of Porgy's "I Got Plenty of Nothing," always a problematic number — "a happy darkie" song, as Parks describes it — the newcomers outwitted the show's creators. Emerging from offstage in evident post-coital pleasure, Porgy slyly said "nothing" when asked what he had been up to.

And rather than an uncomfortable spectacle of a crippled beggar celebrating his dispossession, the song became the joyful expression of the character's erotic bliss. Crisply orchestrated and performed, it was an authentic victory for the creative team, and for Norm Lewis. The other startling moment (conceived by the original writers, but realized here with vivid impact) was the sudden, engulfing silence at the first appearance of white characters, judged by the show's white creators as unworthy of the musical bounty they reserved exclusively for the denizens of Catfish Row. Paulus's staging underlined the fact that, in the world of Porgy and Bess, white men can't dance. In Act II at A.R.T., something almost mystical happened. The transporting power of the work itself, rising up against the challenges posed to it by this production, took over and carried all before it. And by the end, despite my gripes, I was quite moved. The timing is right for a new musical-theater Porgy and Bess. But the A.R.T. production, a would-be revisionist bonanza, was too often at cross-purposes with the material, and it was visually stingy.

The definitive Broadway incarnation for the twenty-first century — robust, show-wise, drenched with Southern atmosphere and sensuality — remains to be seen. FOSTER HIRSCH is a professor of film at Brooklyn College and the author of sixteen books on film and theater. Send feedback to OPERA NEWS . Cabbage Row (Catfish Row) | CharlestonToday Read the review at A Window Into Russia blog Cabbage Row (Catfish Row) 89-91 Church Street • c. 1783 Cabbage Row This row is a late but major example of a pair of houses with a central arcade and well-preserved, commercial ground floors. The row is similar to 83-85 Church Street, but is three-storied rather than two. The name “Cabbage Row” comes from cabbages and other vegetables that were sold here prior to 1928, when Mrs. Loutrel Briggs acquired the house, and when her landscape-architect husband redesigned the back yard. The two buildings together have a double-hipped Mansard roof (without the characteristic dormer windows).

The familiar name “Catfish Row”—originally entitled “A Suite from Porgy and Bess”—is an orchestral work from George Gershwin ’s opera, Porgy and Bess . • Copyright Notice: all material in this series is the exclusive property of Gene Waddell. If you want to reuse any of it in any form, you must get permission in writing from chastoday@charlestontoday.net .

Charleston goes wild over everything about ‘Porgy and Bess’ | The Charlotte Observer May 31, 2016 3:48 PM Charleston goes wild over everything about ‘Porgy and Bess’ Terrific performances of the most beloved American opera are selling out at Spoleto Museums, tours and exhibits commemorate the great Gershwin-Heyward collaboration Jonathan Green’s set design transforms Catfish Row into a Gullah village in Spoleto Festival USA’s “Porgy and Bess.” Julia Lynn ©Julia Lynn Lester Lynch sings “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” to Alyson Cambridge in Spoleto Festival USA’s “Porgy and Bess.” Julia Lynn ©Julia Lynn Sportin’ Life (Victor Ryan Robertson, in pink suit) extols the virtues of “happy dust” to the people of Catfish Row in Spoleto Festival USA’s “Porgy and Bess.” Julia Lynn ©Julia Lynn Porgy (Lester Lynch, center) prepares to make an unimaginably long journey at the end of Spoleto Festival USA’s “Porgy and Bess.” Julia Lynn ©Julia Lynn The once-bedraggled Cabbage Row

, seen here on a walking tour of Charleston, has become elegant and expensive residences.

Lawrence Toppman 1 of 5 Order Reprint of this Story CHARLESTON When the curtain comes up on “Porgy and Bess,” the most impressive large-scale opera in my 33 visits to Spoleto Festival U.S.A. , we see a scrim resembling wrought-iron gates all over the city. It rises like an invitation: Step into our world, into the most famous myth associated with Charleston. This production, virtually sold out through the run of the 40th festival, is the talk of a city that has temporarily gone “Porgy”-mad. The festival offers two-hour “Porgy and Bess” walking tours , also a hot ticket, tied to the opera’s history. “Porgy Houses” have been identified around the city as sites important to African-American history, even if they have nothing to do with the show, and painted with motifs from Jonathan Green’s set design for the opera. The Charleston Library Society , Charleston Museum and College of Charleston Libraries have sponsored related displays or events.

And Gibbes Museum of Art , which opened last weekend after a two-year renovation, has mounted “Beyond Catfish Row: The Art of Porgy and Bess,” an exhibit of drawings and paintings related to the opera since it opened in 1935. (You’ll find composer George Gershwin’s canvases there.) The city has had a thorny relationship with the opera set on its now-extinct Catfish Row – which, in reality, was named Cabbage Row and ran off Church Street, south of Queen. A proposed production during the segregated 1950s never happened. A 1970 version with local performers did the city credit but made no splash beyond it. “Porgy and Bess” had to wait 40 years for Spoleto to give it the attention it deserved. (Well, almost all the attention: The festival chose not to use supertitles, so anyone who doesn’t know DuBose Heyward’s libretto will frequently be lost.) Small sections have been cut, notably Porgy’s “Buzzard Song,” and one of the two intermissions has been dropped to shorten your stay in Gaillard Center.

What’s left flies by over more than three hours, giving pleasure in every scene. The terrific Lester Lynch sets the tone as Porgy with excellent diction, jovial humor and a sense of deep pathos that belongs to the crippled beggar called “a piece of a man” by Sportin’ Life (cheerfully sleazy Victor Ryan Robertson, a fine Almaviva in Opera Carolina’s “Barber of Seville” seven years ago). There’s no weak link in the cast, from Alyson Cambridge’s poignant Bess and Eric Greene’s malevolently sexy Crown down to street criers selling honey, strawberries and deviled crabs. The Johnson C. Smith University Concert Choir, which makes up half the chorus, sing and act with beauty and conviction. Director David Herskovits and painter Green, who designed both set and costumes, can claim a large share of the triumph. They let the region’s Gullah influences creep into the show slowly, until those take over at last in a riot of color that gives Catfish Row a sense of unity. That setting begins as an enclave tucked away from white Charleston, invaded occasionally by authorities who usually mean no good to the black residents.

History’s inescapable here: Even Archdale, the genial chap who helps Peter the Honey Man get out of jail on an unfair charge, explains himself to Porgy by saying, “His folks used to belong to my fam’ly.” Yet over the course of time, the clothes and buildings become transformed. Only Sportin’ Life and Crown, both of whom finally leave the community, and the completely assimilated Christian Serena remain untouched by Sea Island elements. By the end, when Porgy settles in a wheelchair with feathers and cloth decorations, he has the unforced dignity of an African king climbing onto his throne. Such ideas probably never occurred to Heyward, who used the story of local beggar Sammy Smalls as the basis for his 1925 novel “Porgy.” Heyward’s life comes up frequently on that worthwhile walking tour, which turns out to be a two-hour look at almost 350 years of Charleston’s history. (Soon after the city incorporated in 1670, slaves arrived.

They made up the majority of the population by 1708.) The guide leads you slowly around the bottom of the Charleston Peninsula, explaining the interaction among Heyward, wife Dorothy (who turned his novel into a play in 1927, writing with her husband) and George Gershwin, who came to Folly Beach seven years later to study black residents and hear their music. Yet you also learn about the Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins, who was born into slavery but created an orphanage in 1891. He started bands three years later, hoping tubercular students might improve their health by playing instruments. Some folks think Jenkins Band cornettist Gus Aitken created the “wah-wah” brass flutter that became the distinctive sound of the Duke Ellington orchestra. One of those Jenkins bands even played in the pit for the 1927 Broadway run of “Porgy,” where Gershwin may have heard it. That’s the kind of stuff you’ll learn if you let yourself be Porgified at Spoleto this spring.

Toppman: 704-358-5232 “Porgy and Bess” The opera runs through June 12 at Gaillard Center. Tickets can be obtained only by phone at this point: (843) 579-3100 . Porgy and Bess | opera by George Gershwin | Britannica.com opera by George Gershwin Brock Peters Porgy and Bess, dramatic folk opera in three acts by George Gershwin . Its English libretto was written by DuBose Heyward (with lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin ), based on Heyward’s novel Porgy (1925). The opera—which premiered at the Alvin Theatre in New York City on October 10, 1935—is considered to be the first great American opera. It contains many beloved musical numbers, including the arias “ Summertime I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’. ” Background and context In 1926 George Gershwin wrote to Heyward about collaborating on an operatic version of Porgy.

Heyward was enthusiastic, but Gershwin’s other obligations delayed work until 1934. That summer Gershwin and Heyward worked together on an island near Charleston , South Carolina . There the Brooklyn-born composer hoped to absorb the feeling of the Southern setting and the accent and rhythms of African American speech. The ambience was inspirational; Gershwin finished the three-hour opera within a year. George Gershwin, working on the score for Porgy and Bess, 1935. Pictorial Parade Although the writing had proceeded smoothly, casting proved more difficult. Once he had assembled a cast of African American singers who could successfully balance jazz and operatic singing, it became clear that the opera world was not ready for a “black opera,” and the jazz world was not ready for opera at all. Most frustrating of all was that various Broadway producers with whom Gershwin had worked successfully for years insisted that he hire only white singers and put them in blackface . Only after much negotiating and a refusal to compromise on his black cast did Gershwin manage to arrange for an opening on Broadway, where his own reputation could carry the show.

Even then, he lost money on the production, only recouping his expenses by the separate popularity of “ Summertime ” and other tunes from the opera when they were published separately as jazz songs. Similar Topics Madama Butterfly Porgy and Bess met with limited success, running for only 124 performances; although that was an unusually large number for a new opera, it was small for a Gershwin show on Broadway. Jazz fans were apparently put off by the work’s serious tone and opera fans by its saucy voice. At the time, some African American observers felt that the work stereotyped their culture , presenting it as one involving drinking, gambling , violence, and drug dealing. Others were pleased that African Americans were at last being portrayed in a serious stage work of operatic scope. Tap dancer John Bubbles (John William Sublett) as the drug dealer Sportin’ Life in George … Carl Van Vechten Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital file no.

van 5a51768) Cast and main vocal parts Bess, Crown’s girlfriend, then Porgy’s (soprano) Robbins, a Catfish Row resident (tenor) Clara, Jake’s wife (soprano) Jake, a fisherman (baritone)

Question: Catfish Row, Charleston is the setting of which opera?
Answer: PORGY AND BESS